


Twists

by Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Chance Meetings, F/F, Fade to Black, First Kiss, First Time, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 12:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10490952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw/pseuds/Turn_of_the_Sonic_Screw
Summary: Ace gets lost and Susan gets found. The TARDIS is either playing merry havoc or matchmaker. Or both.Written for the prompt: "Susan/Ace, clumsiness, mirrors."





	

**Author's Note:**

> Not tagging for underage, but there is some implied sexual content between the two listed characters. As far as I'm concerned, one is 18 and the other is a Time Lady, so both probably of age. Also nothing more than kissing on screen.

“Professor?” Ace calls into the tangling corridors. Shit, she thinks to herself, I am well and truly lost. “So much for home sweet home.” If only she’d thought to bring some yarn, or some breadcrumbs. Or something. 

The next turn brings her to a fork: the right passage is an ominous orange, but the way to the left is a cool blue. Maybe the ship is trying to tell her something, she hopes. Unless that actually was a piece of modern art, and not a latrine. Well, too late now. Worse comes to worst, random is as good as anything. “Left it is,” she mutters, and wishes vaguely for a weapon.

Instead, the next room she comes to is full of mirrors and a slim, dark-eyed girl. “Boo?” The girl yelps and slips to the floor in a tumult of limbs. 

“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Ace grumbles, and offers the stranger a hand. “You get lost down here, too?”

“Of course not,” the other girl scoffs, clasping Ace’s wrist. “I’m Susan, by the way.”

“Ace,” she replies, then twigs to what Susan has just said. “Then you can help me find my way out?” She pulls Susan upright. “I’d like to try to get back to the control room. Preferably my Doctor’s version of it. Do you think we can get there from here?” Ace knows she got here from there, but, well, this is the TARDIS, and it was being particularly labyrinthine today.

“Yes, of course!” Susan beams, then puts her weight on her feet and promptly collapses. “Except that I think I’ve twisted my ankle.”

“Bollocks.” Ace rolls her eyes when Susan gasps a little. “Nothing for it, then.” She takes off her jacket and knots it around her waist, then crouches, her back to the fortunately-skinny stranger. “Up you go, then.” Susan climbs on, piggyback-style, and Ace locks her arms under the girl’s thighs. 

“Thank you,” Susan says, resting her head on Ace’s shoulder. Ace can feel the pleasant warmth and press of a body--she’s missed that.

“Least I could do, given that I startled you.” She lumbers off, and Susan points them in the right direction, her eyes closed. “Sorry about that, by the way.”

“I’m rather used to it by now,” Susan quips wistfully. “Grandfather and Ian and Barbara and I do ever so much running, and I can be a little clumsy.”

“Grandfather? You’re the Doctor’s grandkid?” Ace shakes her head. “He didn’t mention you.” 

“Mmm.” They share a fretful pause; Ace hopes she hasn’t said too much. “But you travel with him in his future--relative to me, of course.” Ace nods, slowly. Another pause. “Hmm.” The almost imperceptible sound of a single tear. “Well then.” More silence, longer this time. Ace starts to fidget, wants to reassure her passenger, not that there’s anything she can say--in more ways than one.

The Professor is always going off about causality-this and temporal instability-that. Too complicated for her lights. Better stick to small talk, she decides, especially since it sounds like Susan has closed off that inquiry pretty conclusively. “So, uh, what do you like to do in your spare time?”

“Oh, read, listen to music, program computers--such amusing little toys.” Ace can almost hear her beam. “And you?”

“I like fixing things okay...but I like blowing them up better.” She grins but immediately realizes that this is a bit more intense than her passenger’s usual taste. “But, uh, music’s nice.”

“I was going to dance, you know. When you found me.” She chuckles. “Probably would have been a bad idea.”

“Nah, you’d make a beautiful dancer.”

“Unless I tripped all over myself.”

“Just as glad I came along then.” Oh, yes, Ace thinks to herself, play the hero, very smooth. Dimwit.

“My hero,” Susan teases, then bites her lip. Ace can feel the tension in the girl’s muscles through her thin tunic. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to, I won’t…. Never mind,” she adds, sensing Ace’s confusion. “That way.”

That way leads them to a warehouse through which the only way forward is a narrow spiral staircase. “Well, shit.” Ace groans and sets Susan down on a box. “I don’t suppose there’s a detour?”

Susan closes those mysterious eyes again--now wait, Ace thinks to herself, when did you start thinking like that?--and shakes her head. “Not unless you want to go through the conservatory. But it’s full of snapping turtles.”

Ace blinks. “I really need to explore the TARDIS more often.” She rubs her hands together. “Alright, let me at that ankle. Maybe if I give it a bit of a rub you can manage the steps between your good leg and the railings.”

“Oh, would you?” Susan looks up at her with an ingenue’s delight and unlaces her shoe.

“Hell, if it gets me back to the Professor,” she says with a playful smirk. She kneels where Susan has perched on the edge of a crate, and takes the wounded ankle in both hands, massaging it gently, cuffing the leg of Susan’s trousers so they don’t get in the way. 

“That feels delightful,” Susan mews blissfully.   
“Good.” Ace thanks her lucky stars that she’s doing this right. She’s a stranger even to this clinical intimacy, and her first aid experience mostly a) is self-taught and b) deals with cuts and burns. “I’m, uh, glad.” She reddens as Susan smiles down at her, and ducks her head to hide the blush. 

“We should probably give that staircase a try. We need to get you back home, after all.” Ace nods dumbly and bites the inside of her cheek as Susan’s hand traces down from her part to her ear. 

“Yeah. I guess so. C’mon, then. You better go first, and I can brace you if you slip.”

Susan nods, and leads the way. It’s slow going, but Ace finds she doesn’t mind. Likes being in Susan’s presence as they corkscrew monotonously up and up. The rhythm is as much a cage as the iron railings at first but she finds it calming the further they climb. The steps are smooth metal, almost slick, and really, it’s a miracle that Susan doesn’t lose her footing sooner, but Ace catches her with a most unladylike “oof.”

“You’ve got me,” Susan says, and somehow she’s gotten turned around in the fall (seriously, the girl has a gift) to face Ace. 

“Yeah, I guess I do,” she breathes. “You, uh, you okay?” 

“Yes.” Their eyes stay met for a moment longer. “You can let me go, now.” 

Ace blushes again (make that two gifts) as she realizes she has Susan in quite the clinch. “Guess so,” she whispers, and they continue their wordless progress up the stairway.

They reach the top without any more pitfalls, and Susan’s ankle has firmed up enough for her to walk with her arm slung over Ace’s shoulder. Which is only slightly less intimate than carrying her. Ace licks dry lips. Blimey, she knows the TARDIS is bigger on the inside, but this is getting out of hand. Haven’t they come this way already?

“This way,” Susan points, and they meander off to the right. A few more bends bring them to another room filled with, among many other things, a massive bed.

“Odd decor for a bedroom,” Ace announces. “Aquarium, dishwasher, two dozen hard-boiled eggs sorted by color, and--is that a vegetable patch?”

Susan examines the rows of plants without a trace of irony. “Yes,” she decides after a moment’s concerted study. “Definitely a vegetable patch.”

“But why? Why in God’s name would you put all that in a bedroom?” 

“For one thing, it isn’t a bedroom,” Susan pronounces serenely, as though this is the most obvious flaw in the logic. “Grandfather doesn’t believe in them. This is just a room that happens to have a bed in it.” 

“Uh-huh.” She can’t help but laugh at Susan’s earnestness. “Anyway, it’s a bit ran--”

Ace is interrupted by the clang of doors. “Oh dear,” Susan murmurs. “The ship’s locked this section down for maintenance. Some trans-temporal gnarling to unwind.”

Ace groans. “Well, at least we probably won’t starve. Unless the eggs, the veg, and the fish are all toxic.”

Susan gasps in horror. “Some of those species are sapient, you know.”

“The fish?”

“The vegetables.”

“Blimey.” She pulls her jacket from around her waist and tosses both it and herself onto the bed in short order. “Well, how long are we stuck here?”

Susan wrinkles her nose. “Are you still using sixty-minute hours?” Ace nods. “Then about eight hours.”

“Could use a nap, anyway,” Ace mutters. 

“Oh, like a sleepover?”

Ace blinks. “Yeah, I guess if you want to talk about boys and braid each other’s hair. No trashy telly, though. Although, frankly, boys are rubbish and your hair is too short.”

“I could braid your hair,” Susan offers.

“Sure, why the hell not?” She lets it out of its ponytail and turns her back on Susan. She almost falls asleep as the other girl’s fingers run soothingly through her hair, working out the little tangles that she doesn’t bother with, smoothing it and playing with it, combing through it over and over before she starts to work. “Feels nice,” she murmurs dozily.

“I’m glad,” Susan whispers, fingers weaving.

When Ace wakes up, her jacket has been draped over her, and Susan is lying next to her, humming quietly. “You’re awake!”

“So’re you,” Ace counters. Her eyes narrow. “Have you been watching me sleep?”

“No, I’ve mostly been looking at the ceiling. I,” Ace can feel her blush, “I don’t need as much sleep. But it was nice, lying next to you.”

Ace rolls over to face her. “So, how much longer?”

“Another four hours.” Susan’s eyelashes are fine and fluttery.

“Long enough, then,” and by way of explanation, she presses her lips to Susan’s. She’s relieved to feel the other girl meet the kiss head-on. So to speak. Jesus H. Christ. This is just a one-time thing, she rationalizes. After all, the Professor hadn’t said anything about having met her before, but then, he was a pretty sneaky bastard when he wanted to be. She cups Susan’s cheek and kisses her again, parting her lips and welcoming her in.

Later, with the sheets knotted around her legs, Susan laughs, an airy little giggle. “The door’s been open for over an hour.”

“Ship isn’t going to do another maintenance thingy, is it?”

“Not in your lifetime.”

“In that case, we’re just fine.” She grins and lets Susan pull her close again, her braid wrapped around her hand.

Finally, though, they get dressed again. “I don’t think it will be too much longer now,” Susan says cautiously.

“Don’t suppose you can divert us to a shower?” Ace asks, sweat drying on her skin. 

“I’ll ask nicely.” Susan favors her with a fey grin. “I’ve never been with a girl in a shower before.”

“Ask very nicely,” Ace laughs.


End file.
